eGenera's comments on Dell's acquistion of Scalant Systems

Ken Oestrich, of eGenera, sent me a few comments on his take on Dell's announced acquisition of Scalent Systems (see Dell acquires Scalent for more information.)

Here's a lightly edited version of what Ken had to say:

I’ve received a few inquiries already on the Dell/Scalent acquisition and whether it affects Egenera – so I thought I’d be pre-emptive with you…

• No, this doesn’t change our OEM relationship with Dell; it remains in-place
• Remember Scalent is not a direct competitor; their approach is ‘loosely-coupled’ automation of in-place assets (e.g. adapters that talk to switches, servers, etc.). Egenera’s approach is unified computing / converged infrastructure, which virtualizes and then composes infrastructure. Our approach removes most physical assets and replaces them with logical virtualized equivalents.
• Competitively, we are akin to Cisco UCS, HP Matrix, and even HDS UCP. I suspect those comparisons/competitors will persist.
• Positioning-wise, Egenera will still pursue the higher-end, mission-critical deals where we’ve excelled. The Scalent/AIM product is more broad mid-market.
• Directionally, please stay-tuned for more HW platforms that will run our unified/converged infrastructure.

And now my quick editorial:

With the Scalent acquisition, Dell has chosen a path/strategy of ‘loosely-coupled’ automation, manipulating in-place assets – which deviates from unified computing approaches from Cisco (UCS), Egenera (PAN), HP (Matrix), and Hitachi Data (UCP).  So I’m not completely sure whether the deal will materially help Dell be competitive vs. HP or vs CSCO UCS.

Snapshot analysis

It's, of course, in eGenera's best interest to focus the energy from this announcement in another direction, a direction that will not directly impact their ongoing relationship with Dell and will not reduce the revenues derive from that relationship. That being said, Ken offers some excellent points.

A point he didn't make is that while technically what Scalent  and what eGenera do are different,  both could be used to address similar problem sets, depending upon the an organization's requirements.

I've always thought that technology from Cassatt, Scalent and eGenera were all addressing the same needs, but addressing them in a different fashion. The marketing messages of the three suppliers, however, were always quite distinct.